Winter Eyes
by trouble in my veins
Summary: I suppose this makes us best friends now. Oneshot. LunaGinny. Femslash.


"**Winter Eyes"**

**by Nina**

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, but wouldn't it be awesome if I did?  
**Beta:** Sioniann, an amazing author and friend.

"_I get a little warm in my heart when I think of winter."_ –Tori Amos.

---

Snow fluttered past the windows in the Great Hall, as owls sullenly drifted in at a steady pace to deliver parcels and letters. It seemed every morning held the secret of whichpoor studentwould walk from the Great Hall, a walk of terror, a walk of bent spine.

The Ravenclaw table retained the most students, because Ravenclaws were witty and intelligent, and those who were gone had most likely joined Voldemort. Ravenclaws are surprisingly gullible when it comes to promises of love or power.

The Hufflepuffs, the good old Hufflepuffs. One of their brethren had been the first fatality in the second coming of war, the news delivered heavily by Professor Dumbledore when Ginny was in her third year. "Remember Cedric Diggory!" he had told the quiet school, and everything had been solemn and quiet and tense, and no matter what side anyone was on, there was a clenching of the heart and a shared sense of uneasiness all around.

It was mainly those in Slytherin who had gone; they had fled with the first summoning from their Lord and were not missed.

Then there were the Gryffindors. The long, valiant stretch of the Gryffindor table had many vacancies, for many students sorted into the House of the Lion had bravely gone off to war tofight like so many before them. It was Ginny's house, Gryffindor, where the warriors lay, brave and generous, and willing to leave at a moment's notice if war began.

Students at Hogwarts had been strongly advised to return home for the winter holiday, but there were exceptions, such as the few students without a home to return to. Hogwarts, at this time,was a grim place indeed, as everyone who was left was missing something, all stuck in a darkness in which they were unfortunately very alone. While Ginny did in fact have a home to return to, all of Molly Weasley's faith was in Hogwarts, and she had sent an owl to the school requesting that Ginny be allowed to remain at school over the holidays. Over the years, the school board had grown frightened of Ginny's mother, and they willingly obliged.

From a window near the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall came a small, jittery owl the size of a tennis ball. It landed near Ginny's left hand, nearly upsetting her tea onto her toast. Attached to the owl's leg was a bit of folded parchment, addressed to Ginny in her mother's familiar handwriting. Ginny shoved the letter into the pocket of her robes and stood. The tenseness of the Hall seemed to greaten as she did so, but she smiled and it dissipated.

Hogwarts, she thought, had always been a trusting school.

--

As Ginny walked out onto the Hogwarts lawn, it was as if she had stumbled accidentally into a desolate snow globe. She had owned a Muggle snow globe in her youth, and to make it snow inside the globe shewould turn it upside down. It had been almost magical, but not quite.Now, everything had been turned upside down in one way or another. Everything was in a constant state of unrest.

However, war did not stop Hagrid from decorating the grounds, as tinsel dripped from every tree, and large silver and gold ornaments clinked and clanged together in the hostile wind. Evergreens were still being brought into the Great Hall from the Forbidden Forest by Hagrid, who waved a large hand at Ginny as he passed.

But there were no students skating in figure eights on the lake, no snowmen with someone's old hat clumsily levitated to the top of them. There was nothing except for the empty sound of wind rushing past Ginny's ears.

"Hello," came a small voice from behind Ginny. She turned to find Luna smiling vaguely, the newest issue of _The Quibbler_ in her left hand. She wasn't wearing gloves.

"Hi," Ginny replied breathlessly, "aren't you cold?"

"No, I'm Luna," Luna said seriously, looking intently at Ginny. "Luna Lovegood. You do remember me?"

Ginny laughed and Luna joined her (without a clue as to why)their tinkling voices rising and falling to the ground as the two of them walked together, Ginny crashing into her friend on accident as they trudged along.

"Why aren't you home for the holidays?" Ginny asked once they had found a seat on a large stone near a copse of leafless trees.

"Some experiments my father is conducting are too dangerous for me to be about the house…" Snowflakes settled on Luna's head and on her magazine. "I decided to stay here at school. And some of my things are missing, so I'm going toneed time to look for them…"

A pang of something terribly close to sadness struck suddenly and surprisingly at Ginny's heart, and she smiled somewhat forlornly at Luna.

"What are you missing?"

"A few texts on Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, some drawings I've done…" Luna stared pensively at the air above Ginny's head, her ankles tangling with each other and scraping at the rocks. "Nothing I can't get again. Except for my necklace," and Luna grasped at her neck, which, Ginny noticed, was bare of the usual string of butterbeer caps.

"Well, you can make another one. I could help you!"

Somehow, Ginny had known that it would not be the same, and she knew this possibly by the way that Luna's protuberant eyes were dim despite the sun shining straight into them. By the fact she took no notice of the sun in her eyes,but that wasn't something Luna would notice.

"Thank you," she murmured absently. "But you don't have to. I'll find it eventually. And if I don't, I have other things of my mother's at home."

Another pang, this one of definite sadness, hit Ginny again, and she looked at Luna's icy figure, framed against the backdrop of the frozen lake and snow-covered trees, and sighed, her breath forming clouds in the air in front of her. Ginny had found herself forgetting that Luna had lost her mother at a young age, and she knew that it was a horrible, inconsiderate thing to forget something as important as that.

"I hope you find your things," Ginny expressed honestly. A few moments passed, Ginny fingering the unread letter in her pocket. "Luna, would you read this for me?" Ginny handed the letter to Luna.

She examined it carefully and unfolded it. "I thought you knew how to read," she said, her brows knitting in confusion. Ginny nodded.

"I do, but I want you to read it to me."

"Dear Ginny," Luna began, "everything here at the Burrow is fine, and I know how worried you are about your brothers and I want you to know that you have no reason to be."

"Mum always says things like that," Ginny observed, not without a touch of melancholy to her voice. As if uninterrupted, Luna went back to reading, and Ginny stared at the curly ends of Luna's long hair, the flyaway curls illumined by the weak sunlight reflecting off the icy surface of the lake. Ginny only caught snippets of Luna's voice, saying things like _Percy isn't talking to us yet_ and _Charlie is training dragons to help_, but what she heard didn't carry much meaning.

"Ron, Hermione, and Harry left last week and didn't," Luna paused. "Your mum crossed some things out; do you want me to read those to you? Of course, I'll only be able to read parts; I can't see it too well."

Blinking, Ginny retrieved the letter from Luna's lazy grasp and furrowed her brow, looking at her mother's looping script for the spot Luna had stopped reading.

_I don't want you to worry yourself, dear, but all I know is that Ron and Hermione went off looking for something with Harry. They have sent me an owl since_ (here is the other crossing out that Luna described) _and they are safe and expect to be home soon. _

Love,  
Mum

Ginny folded the letter slowly and placed it on the newly fallen snow beside her. Unexpectedly, tears stung at her eyes as if she had been whipped in the face by a cold burst of wind.

"He really loves you," Luna commented, twirling _The Quibbler_ around.

"Who?" Ginny asked, taking her white-gloved hands and swiping at her eyes with them.

"Harry. He loves you, I noticed that last year. I liked him too, you know, as a friend." A small, reminiscing smile played on her lips. "We went to Professor Slughorn's Christmas party as friends. He's very nice, but he isn't very fun to go with to a party. He left me talking to Professor Trelawney the entire time—she's very interesting but she thinks I'm going to be trampled by a Snorkack, even though I told her they were very gentle creatures… she just won't listen…"

"If he loved me, he would have let me go with him," mumbled Ginny. She looked up to see Luna coming nearer to her, golden strands of hair floating behind her like orange and yellowflamestwisting outwards fromthe sun.Oddly enough, even though her name was Luna, Ginny thought she looked more like the sun than the moon, the silver bangles on her wrists shimmering in a light. Whether it was the sunlight or simply her own light, Ginny couldn't tell.

She liked to think it might be Luna's own light.

"No," Luna said, patting Ginny absently on the back. "I don't think so. Maybe he is trying to protect you. There are lots of dangerous things out there… thestrals… dementors… glibbets…"

"Glibbets?"

"Yes. They're terrible. They're known to eat a man alive and then spit out their bones… it's really horrid… I think that they make their houses out of the bones… my father said so…"

Ginny's heart clenched in her chest, and she slumped, a sharp breath stabbing at her throat. Luna rubbed her back comfortingly, mumbling small, incoherent things, mainly myths and stories that she shouldn't still believe in at fifteen.

"Luna?" Ginny started to say. Luna looked up, her wide eyes full of a deranged kind of sadness and sorrow, the bright reflection of winter mirrored exactly. Ginny couldn't take it, and surprised herself when she brushed her lips against Luna's.

Luna didn't close her eyes when she kissed. She simply looked forward as if studying what she saw, and all Luna could see was skin and strands of bright red hair waving in the wind.

"We shouldn't," Luna said as soon as they pulled apart, both a bit breathless and flushed, Ginny's heart beating violently somewhere in the region of her throat. She pointed above to the mistletoe hanging above them, white berries even more so blindingly white in the sun. The two girlssquinted against the rays of light that were filtered through the barren tree. "There are Nargles in the mistletoe… they could get in our hair… I've heard that the Ministry is attempting to control them…"

"I don't care," Ginny replied. "I really don't."

Ginny kissed her again, and Luna's kisses in return were halting and soft, lips fluttering against her skin like small, soft wings. Her magazine slid onto the snow as she rubbed vague circles on Ginny's arching back with gloveless hands.

The kiss was a kiss of want. Desperation deep like a bottomless pit. The new sensation of soft skin under fingertips. Luna's taste: cinnamon and peppermint and coffee. And then the need which caused Ginny to take Luna's bottom lip in her teeth and wonder what it was that caused Luna to clutch at her hands so tightly, and move a bit away.

There were no words, only hands on unfamiliar terrain.

"I suppose this makes us best friends now," Luna whispered.

"I suppose it does," Ginny replied, her fingers tracing the delicate skin on Luna's neck, stopping at a row of indentations spread across the skin.

_FIN._

**A/N: **As an afterthought, I think I should have made Ginny more sensitive to the issue of making Luna read the letter from Molly, considering Luna has no mum. Also! The kiss is platonic, hence the entire paragraph of it being "a kiss of want," kthx.


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